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The Networked Bay Environmental Assessment and Monitoring Stations or NetBEAMS is part of the Java Distributed Data Acquisition and Control (JDDAC) Community. JDDAC software is being used to build out wired and wireless sensors in the San Francisco Bay to test water quality and environmental data. The NetBEAMS system will enhance the reach of current systems by allowing them to be deployed remotely and offshore.

Big things get started with Genesis, a project which bills itself as "a framework that aims to simplify development of client/server and desktop applications by integrating several other open-source products and extending them in innovative ways." The project combines Hibernate, AspectWerkz, Apache Commons, and other libraries to create a system that is simple, scalable, and readily testable. The project's home page says that one Genesis-based customer solution is processing over one million transactions per day.

The recently-launched CodeZoo is like a "CPAN for Java". As Mark Hedlund writes in CodeZoo, a new O'Reilly site, launches, "CodeZoo exists to help you find high-quality, freely available, reusable components, getting you past the repetitive parts of coding, and onto the rest and the best of your projects." Java.net projects can benefit from these pre-packaged, ready-to-use (and, more importantly, ready-to-combine) open-source code, first in Java and later in other languages.

Helen Chen, java.net Site Manager, has started a JavaPedia page About Online Communities. She has seeded the page with an impressive list of Papers and Articles, Books, Journals, and Lists, and Organizations, websites, and related online communities. She notes that the list is preliminary and invites you to add your favorite resources. Below the line at the bottom of the page feel free to discuss any related issues.

There are many great open-source projects to provide the pieces of a Java web application... but who has time to learn them all? AppFuse combines best-of-breed pieces to get you up and running with Tomcat, MySQL, Spring, Struts, and more, with a single install command. You can learn more about AppFuse in the feature article AppFuse: Start Your J2EE Web Apps, written by the project's founder. The project is currently asking interested parties to download and use AppFuse and join the mailing list to suggest improvements. The next version is slated to improve usability with IDE's and reduce coupling with Tomcat to support other application servers.

The Heap Analysis Tool (HAT) is one of the most popular downloads on java.net. HAT analyzes heap dump files from Java programs, and is commonly used as a tool to track down unintentional object retention (often referred to as "memory leaks"). It reads the heap dump and sets itself up as a web-server, so that a developer can run queries against the dump through a familiar web interface. HAT was originally written in 1998 and has been released as an "interesting, but unsupported, technology that may be of use as a debugging aid for Java developers."

Domain Driven Development focuses on building the domain first, then allowing a framework to provide a UI. The Trails project is an example of this, offering a DDD framework "in the spirit of Ruby on Rails or Naked Objects," with the goal of making Java enterprise development radically simpler. This Java Enterprise community project reuses established Java technologies such as Spring, Tapestry, and Hibernate, and doesn't involve generated code - as its introduction says, "you only write code when you want to override what Trails gives you."

In the spotlight this week, the ACM has awarded "Richard Gabriel of Sun Microsystems - the ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award for his role in shaping the growth and impact of object technology, and his influence in developing a software design community that cares about clear communication of ideas. A published poet and musician, Gabriel conceived of java.net as a self-creating and self-governed web place where communities join to build a city of diverse interests engaged in using the Java language and technology in routine and innovative ways. The Newell Award recognizes career contributions that have breadth within computer science, or that bridge computer science and other disciplines."

The latest java.net Success Story offers a look at the OpenSymphony projects. Many of these projects are so successful on their own - notably WebWork, Quartz, SiteMesh, and OSCache - that some people don't realize they have a common parent. In fact, they do share a common set of principles: business-friendliness, J2EE focus, and real-world applicability. Based on an interview with project leads Patrick Lightbody and Hani Suleiman, the article looks at OpenSymphony's history, the wide adoption of its projects, and how it fits in with the java.net community.

We welcome the Java Advanced Imaging (JAI) and the JAI Image I/O projects. JAI allows Java applications to incorporate high-performance, high-end image processing functionality, while the Image I/O code enables reading and writing of popular formats. With the source now available, JAI's project leaders intend to develop JAI 1.3 under the JCP, with community members contributing to the expert group that will design and implement this new version.

The new Embedded Java Community on java.net has made its premiere, and is inviting developers of all types to get involved with the community's activities. The community contacts acknowledge that since the community is so new, "most of our projects with be starting out in the Incubator," and while they work on their policies for incubator project graduation, they suggest developers check out the EmbeddedJava Incubator to see what's cooking.

There are many open source Java projects. Submit a proposal for a talk or a tutorial about your favorite for this year's O'Reilly Open Source Convention. OSCon is held in Portland, OR August 1-5 but the call for papers closes February 13.

The new2java project helps new and experienced developers get up and running on the Java platform by directing them to useful training resources. The project collects links to code samples, tutorials and quizzes, and provides a place to chat with other developers about problems, solutions, coding techniques and more.

Once you've finished your session proposals for the JavaOne conference, it's time to move on to the next most important to-do: your entry for the annual T-shirt hurling contest. This tradition of building elaborate machines to toss T-shirts into the main-hall crowd, organized and hosted by Java creator James Gosling, now has its own java.net project. The page currently hosts contest rules and an entry form, along with a look back at Dr. Gosling's 2003 trebuchet entry, and promises more updates in the near future.

Dynamic content is much easier to serve and accelerate thanks to OSCache, one of the Open Symphony projects on java.net. OSCache caches portions of JSP's, binary content like images and PDF's, and even any Java object. It can also return cached items in case of a server-side error (instead of blowing out of the whole page), and supports clustering, persistent caching, and programmatic control of caching.

Safari, the premiere collection of technical electronic books for developers, has offered its services to java.net members through two projects: Safari search plug-ins for NetBeans and for Eclipse. These plug-ins put a wealth of Java information at your fingertips, without leaving your IDE of choice. If you're not ready to subscribe to Safari yet, you can try it for 14 days free, using either the 10 books of your choice or a pre-populated bookshelf that's already set up for you.

JCK, the J2SE Technology Compatibility Kit used by Sun and licensee partners to ensure compatibility in different Java implementations, is now available as a read-only source release in the JCK project. While licensees have always had access to the JCK, this is the first time the developer community at large has been able to see the compatibility test suite, and better understand how compatibility is assessed between different virtual machine implementations.

Peers in the field of bioinformatics can share their efforts more effectively, thanks to the Chinook project. Chinook is a peer-to-peer bioinformatics system, turning command-line analysis applications into services that can be accessed over the internet. Over 25 such services have been made "Chinook-ready" and more can be added easily with XML. Chinook was awarded the 2004 BCNet "Best Overall Application Award" in the "Coolest Application" competition at the 4th Annual BCNet 2004 Conference.

The Portlet Community has recently made its debut on java.net. The community is dedicated to sharing information and code for building web portals, which are loosely defined as offering some combination of content aggregation, personalization, search, and single sign-on. The community is particularly interested in JSR-168, which aims to standardize portal components, or "portlets".

The "Mustang" Snapshot Releases give developers access to the latest features and fixes made to the J2SE 6.0 release. Whether you choose to download the binaries or the source code, be aware that these early releases are only lightly tested before being made available so if you are risk averse or inexperienced, these snapshot releases should be avoided. Read Mustang Shapshots: Another experiment in openness by Mark Reinhold. Update: Build 13 was added on November 18, 2004.

WebWork, housed both on java.net and opensymphony.com, simplifies web application development by providing reusable UI components, pluggable configuration, an Inversion of Control (IoC) container, data mapping from HTTP to Java objects, a validation framework, and more. Though not as well-known as some app servers, it is popular enough to be covered by several books, including Java Open Source Programming and Art of Java Web Development.

The 2004 JCP Committee Election is now underway and is open through November 15 at Midnight PST. Members can vote for the open seats on the J2SE/J2EE and J2ME Executive Committees. Election results are to be available on November 16, with winners beginning their terms on November 30. More information about the election process is explained in the FAQ section

The Leafy project is designed to enable socket-based distributed systems that incorporate non-J2SE participants, such as J2ME devices and non-Java nodes. It is being used as the basis of LeafySeadragon, an application that uses underwater hydrophones to research two-way communication between humans and cetaceans (dolphins, porpoises, whales). A java.sun.com article on LeafySeadragon has more details on how it works.

Dealing with hundreds or thousands of audio files is hard enough, especially if you like some and don't like others. The Attune player from the Java Desktop community offers a solution: pay attention to what the user plays and what he or she skips over, then play more of the music the user seems to like. The simple player is already good enough to be used for daily listening, and the project is soliciting help from developers with Swing, JMF, and I/O skills.

java.net's ongoing success stories series is spotlighting JOGL, the project to allow Java programs to use the OpenGL 2D and 3D graphics API. In this article, JOGL co-creator Ken Russell speaks with editor Chris Adamson about JOGL's history, its accomplishments, and its future.

Several new features are available to help promote your java.net projects. Project owners can now indicate that the project contains a downloadable executable by clicking on 'Change your project directory settings' from their "My Pages" tab. This will cause a special "downloadable" icon to appear alongside the project name in the project directory. Also, project announcements are now available via RSS - details for setting up a feed for your project are available on the Getting Started page.

Separating web application appearance from functionality is made easier with SiteMesh. It allows you to assemble web pages from smaller, dynamic parts, and add a consistent appearance at the end of the process. The result is pages that look nicer and are easier to maintain, and special-purpose pages like printer-friendly pages are a snap. A feature article by Will Iverson can help you get started with SiteMesh.